“No,” she said. “No dog. A rabbit. One minute it was the rabbit and the next minute it was you.”

“A rabbit . . .?”

She stood up and walked around the room, inspecting every corner. She stopped at the fireplace. “The storm last night was pretty bad, huh?” She paused, dragging her heel in the soot and dust around the fireplace. Outside, I could hear rain pattering against the window. “You live here?”

“How—how are you here?” I mumbled. I touched my head again. More blood. “How did you get inside the house?”

She rubbed her thumb over the mantel. The trail she left in the thick layer of dust was visible from across the room. “Yeah, the storm was pretty bad,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “I guess you saw all the limbs and trees down in the woods? And you have a broken window in the kitchen.” She squatted down to look at the folded chairs and watched a big spider crawl over one of them. “You’re lucky you’re up here away from everything. In the town down there everything is flooding out.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the village at the foot of the mountain. “They are losing their shit.”

My head ached terribly. “Yeah,” I croaked. My throat was dry. “There was a blackout here. The generator.” I remembered the canary and closed my eyes.

“Oh yeah?” The woman turned back toward me. “You live here?” she asked again.

“Yes,” I said.

I felt under a spell. The light in the room was gray, dim, and the empty room seemed like a yawning chasm, the floorboards running away toward the windows, far away. A lunar landscape. This strange woman could ask anything and I would answer.

“Am I okay?” It was a thought but I said it aloud somehow, looking at my stained fingers.

She smiled. “Oh, that. A flesh wound, my darlin’.”

I looked up at her, taken aback.

“You’ll survive,” she said. “I think I’ll stick around, though.”

The room twirled a little and I slid back down to my previous position of lying flat on the floor. All resistance drained out of me.

“I mean I can help you.” She walked over to the front window and looked toward the buildings at the edge of the field. “What have you got going over there?” When I only scowled weakly in reply, she shrugged. She kept talking and talking. “I like it. Looks like a pretty strong place.” She paused. “The storm is only the beginning, you know. The news is wild.”

I grunted a response, my head a red haze of pain. The quiet spun out forever as she stood there looking out the window. She seemed to be looking at the city, at the tree line, performing calculations in her head or checking for intruders.

I waited for her to insist on taking me to a hospital, and I tried to formulate a response, the words slipping through my brain like oil. But she didn’t. My wound seemed to matter little to her. Because of this, because of the distraction of pain, because of my desperation, I did not fear her.